Over 100,000 persons per year in the United States are afflicted with a cancer of the colon and rectum. When the number of colon and rectal cancers occurring each year is combined with the number of cancers occurring in other digestive organs, including the esophagus and stomach, cancers of the digestive system account for more occurrences of cancer than any other single form of the disease. Contrary to many other forms of cancer, early diagnosis and treatment of digestive tract cancer results in a cure rate of 80% to 90%. If, however, the disease is not detected until its later stages, the cure rate drops significantly. Thus, early detection of the disease is important for the successful treatment of digestive tract cancer.
Most cancers of the digestive tract bleed to a certain extent. This blood is deposited on and in fecal matter excreted from the digestive system. The presence of blood in fecal matter is not normally detected, however, until gross bleeding occurs—that is, until the blood is visible to the naked eye. Gross bleeding, however, is symptomatic of advanced cancers.
Early-stage digestive tract cancers, including pre-cancerous polyps, also tend to bleed, which produces occult (hidden) blood in the fecal matter. Other pathological conditions, such as Crohn's disease and diverticulitis, also produce occult blood in the fecal matter. Accordingly, test equipment and test procedures have been developed for use by physicians in testing for the presence of occult blood in fecal matter as an aid for diagnosing these and other medical conditions.
For example, a commonly used test for screening for colorectal cancer is a fecal occult blood test, which tests for the presence of hemoglobin in feces. The presence of hemoglobin in feces is an indicator of intestinal bleeding, which is frequently associated with colorectal cancer. When such fecal blood is detected, a patient can be referred for further medical testing.
Fecal immunochemical testing (FIT) is one type of assay used to detect hemoglobin indicative of fecal occult blood. FIT uses an antibody specific to the human globin protein of hemoglobin to measure the amount of blood in feces. To perform FIT on feces one first obtains a defined quantity of feces and suspend the sampled feces in a suitable liquid to prepare a feces suspension appropriate for testing. There is a need for a device that provides for an easy acquisition of a defined quantity of feces by a user and for the preparation and testing of a portion of the sample by a human or automated tester.